Saturday, 3 November 2012

Stormy Weather

For the past
few days, in large swathes of this city, the 3G cellphone network run by one of
the biggest operators has been malfunctioning. Your phone will ring but, when
you answer, you can't hear a thing. When this happens it is at first obviously perplexing,
soon becomes understandably irritating and, in the end, inexplicably
embarrassing. The bloke in the phone shop is of the opinion that it might take
them a week to fix it, which is a 'disaster' for at least one of my
acquaintances whose arrangements are dependent on phone calls rather than
emails or txt mssgs.

The CEO of
the network was on this morning's TV news - not, ironically, to talk about the
malfunction, but promoting the imminent launch of the latest, more advanced 4G phone
technology. In fact he didn't mention our little problem and I had to resist
the urge to shout at the telly in outrage. But this isn't about to turn into a luddite,
flat-earthist rant about the failings of communications technology which,
although imperfect, is a lot better than what we had before.

At the
beginning of October I happened to be standing beside a small oak tree which
boasted a brass plaque declaring that it had been planted in memory of 250,000
trees that were lost in London during four hours of exceptionally stormy weather
on 16th October 1987. The north of England was unaffected (as I recall) but the
national news media (based in London) brought us the images and statistics of
destruction swiftly and comprehensively. I have to admit that, from a distance
of 200 miles, I found it difficult to empathise fully with the distress of
those closely affected - despite the best efforts of the press to convey the
severity of the situation.

Twenty five
years later the news media are full of images and stories concerning Sandie, the
much bigger storm that has caused extensive damage, disruption and loss of life
in and around New York - another place seething with news teams. Again it's not
in my back yard but this time I found it easier to empathise with the victims.
Why? Because of cellphone coverage. Professional reportage has now been
augmented by amateur video recordings which, with their unscripted soundtracks (mostly,
in this case, comprising the exclamation "Oh my God!") lend a cinema véritépiquancy which
resonates with ordinary, everyday experience.

There are
now more cellphones than there are humans on the planet (I can't vouch for this
statistic but I am inclined to accept it given that I have personally owned at
least a dozen) which benefits another aspect of news reporting: there is more
coverage and exposure of "obscure" events. The 'Arab Spring' is the
most obvious example of how we are now able to get news that, just twenty five
years ago, would not have come to our attention as immediately, as prolifically
or with quite the same, unfiltered impact.

Sandie is
the latest example. The storm had previously wreaked havoc and devastation on
Caribbean islands but coverage of that was incidental to the New York story: Caribbean
islands, besides hosting fewer commercial news teams, also have a miniscule
influence on the world's economy. Despite this we did get some news thanks to
the cellphone. Irritating and embarrassing it may be, but the cellphone is
lifting us out of the stone-age of information dissemination.

As a postscript,
an experiment in some remote Ethiopian villages has fascinating repercussions.
Children, illiterate and with no knowledge of the English language, were given
tablet computers. Neither the tablets nor the programmes were modified and no
instruction was offered. The speed with which they subsequently learnt to use
the computers was astonishing - to the extent that it calls into question the comparable
efficacy of the traditional classroom/teacher/group-of-pupils model.

It's
annoying when it goes wrong but today's technology compensates with a bonus:
freedom of information.